Tiny Creature Support Group by coltonphillips
Tiny Creature Support Group!
Welcome to Tiny Creature Support Group (I hope you brought snacks!)

GOAL:
- Identify the creature by name, by selecting one of the 26 Alphabet letters.
RULES:
- Type 'BUY' to BUY-sect. Remove 1/2 of all remaining possible Letter guesses; It costs you $ to use.
Wrong guesses costs you health.
Type 'QUIT' to leave at any time.
PLOT:
You find yourself at a support group for TINY CREATURES! Someone forgot to bring any name-tags, so it's your job to guess the names of each attendant one LETTER at a time! Don't make too many mistakes or people will think you are a bit of a narcissist.
Author: Colton Phillips
Please consider following me on itchio http://coltonphillips.itch.io
And I stream games and game programming on twitch https://twitch.tv/coltonphillips
| Link | https://github.com/ColtonPhillips/ludum-dare-56 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-creature-support-group |
Ratings
| Overall | 245th | 3.171⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 214th | 3.184⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 247th | 2.921⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 251th | 3.158⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 315th | 2.063⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 111th | 3.459⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 98th | 3.474⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 251th | 2.973⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 46🗳️ | 52🗨️ |
It should be easier to die (like, you lose 10 points for a wrong letter or something) so you'd be more careful with your choices. But, I do think there really is something fun in there: it's satisfying to solve it - a hangman RPG/puzzle game could be awesome. Plus, more terminal apps should have a soundtrack.
(Also, made a Mac build if you want it: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-creature-support-group/help-needed-macrust)
- I played this like wordle - start with vowels. Figure out the shape of the word, go from there.
- The clues may or may not help, very red herring-y lol
- Could benefit from a layout like wordle, where you change the colours of letters alreaedy picked, rather than having to interpret a list. A keyboard layout would also be nice (like wordle)
- Number of letters could be easier to read, underscores just become one long stick and hard to count.
- I guess the numbers are supposed to be completely forgiving? I can't see losing unless you're guessing everything. My guess is you just wanted people to be able to get through the whole game, which I guess is fine for a jam, but really sucks all the tension out.
- A cute text adventure!
Very fun with the framework of the tiny creature support group too, I had a good time playing this. Very well done!

soooo
bisection is dividing a set of things by half (e.g. removing 26 cards from a deck)
soooo BUY-section is dividing the problem set in a half (mo money = mo problems, therefore less money = fewer problems!)
Thanks about the art work. I just picked up inking with a bamboo brush and knew I needed SOME graphics!
I love it! The sound is hilarious. Always great to see a fellow Rustacean here. Gj!
Good stuff.

(I also had a hit of nostalgia by seeing a text-based game haha)
I suppose I personally would have liked it more if it was just actual animals for most of it rather than pop culture references as I didn't know all of them. The way the hints were written, they mostly also didn't seem to help me much at all. But since it was balanced so generously, I managed to get through it anyway. Without even realizing that there's a buy mechanic so I was just hoarding money :P
At the end of the day it's just not that satisfying though if I'm basically just exhausing all the letters one by one until I happen to press the right one. It often felt less like guessing at the creature and more like just using my knowledge of what are the more common letters in the English language.
By the way, not turning off graphics rating will simply mean that you're getting lots of 1s for the graphics rating. And that can influence peoples' overall ratings.
I really wanted to include pop culture references but I see your point. With a bit more time I'm sure I'll find a better balance.
And for live dev, follow me on twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/coltonphillips
Source code: https://github.com/ColtonPhillips/ludum-dare-56